Experiment in Crime (14 page)

He put in a very private phone call.

When he came from the booth, he saw Connie vanishing through the rear door of the barroom.

He rushed to the front entry.

"Mr. Skeat" was just driving away. He got the number of the license. Then he ran to the parking yard for his own car.

In a drugstore, many blocks down Collins Avenue, the professor dialed a number and anxiously watched the street outside. His car was parked where he could see it.

"Harmon," he said into the phone. He added a little more.

"I was just leaving," Harmon said hurriedly. "They're working tonight; we think."

"Look! I'm on Collins--phone booth--first drug store below the Egret. Double-O's general factotum--The Tip--"

"I know him."

"--is also Solo, the driver of--"

An explosive, "No!" came over the wire.

"Right! I've told Miss Maxson. She has told Double-O. I think The Tip recognized me--"

"Recognized you!"

The professor's voice changed, but was still quite steady. "Harmon!
He
recognized me, all right. He just drove by and gave my car the once-over!"

"Listen, Professor! This is the sort of thing I was afraid of! I can't get to you or send a man to you! Can he see you from the street?"

"When I come out--sure."

"He'll shoot."

"But there might be a back door, too."

The G-man talked fast. "Okay. Use it. Or stay inside there. Do the best you can. If you try moving, Burke--hide. Don't go near Bedelia's. Don't go back to the hotel. Go--I've got it! Go to Judge Macey's place--"

"Macey's? "

"I'll send them word. I can't hang on any longer, Burke. Thanks. Thanks for everything. Good luck!"

Professor Burke opened the phone booth door. He peered again. The Tip had double-parked and was waiting.

"Is there a back way out of this place?"

The drug clerk looked at him. "What for?"

"There's a man out there I don't want to meet."

The druggist stared a moment longer-at direct, steady eyes. "Okay, bud. Turn left."

He passed shelves of bottles, entered a room stacked with cartons, and he saw the door. It led to a narrow walk.

He peered around the corner of the building.

The Tip was leaving his car. He moved toward the store--his right hand inside his jacket.

The professor waited an instant. He heard the automatic door-closer hiss. He ran across the walk. As he had expected, The Tip's motor was running.

He did not drive slowly--this time.

The car went like a leaf in a wind tunnel. Even so, before the professor came to the first turn in Collins Avenue, he saw headlights twist from the curb. His car. The Tip would be frantic. A dead man had come back from the grave--a man who knew him in both identities. The Tip's reaction was simple:
get that man as soon as possible.

Collins Avenue curved. There was a red light. The professor howled his brakes and went through the light. He made an S-turn. Ahead was a wide, straight stretch. He pressed on the horn-rim and followed its blast. When he had another opportunity, he looked in his mirror. The Tip was gaining.

Collins Avenue turned left at the end of that stretch, but the professor went straight ahead on Indian Creek Drive. He got around a truck and in front of a convertible, came out again on Collins, and looked back. The pursuing car was still closer. Down the avenue, beside the Roney-Plaza Hotel--pink and tremendous in the brilliance of Twenty-third Street--traffic waited in a solid huddle for the light to change. He stopped and jumped out, abandoning the car in the midst of many others. He ducked through them and ran across a parking yard. He heard The Tip's brakes scream.

In front of him was the blind pocket of water called Lake Surprise, a salt pond connected with Indian Creek and the canals. Sightseeing boats were tied up there. A high, curved bridge spanned the backwater. A man with a megaphone was still barking a late ride. Small private craft lay at numerous little docks; around one were several water bicycles. People were pedaling them about on the lake. The professor snatched bills from his pocket, pressed five dollars into the hand of the water-bike attendant, jumped onto one, and churned furiously toward the canal--and comparative dark.

A car on the shore behind him backfired. A fast bee buzzed past the professor. A tiny wind fanned his cheek.

The Tip was shooting.

Ahead, the waters were contained between cement banks over which bushes hung. He pedaled with all his might. There was another report. The bullet ripped his jacket. He went around the first of the overhanging shrubs.

On the street behind him came the faint sounds of people yelling. He drove the pontooned craft down the dark canal and saw another bridge ahead. He scrambled ashore, setting the water-cycle adrift. He ran across Dade Boulevard and into the golf course, behind the fire house. He caught his breath.

A large, white hotel stood on the other side of the golf course. He reconnoitered it from behind a clump of oleanders. People on the street. Cars coming and going. A cab driver reading a comic book.

The Tip had probably eluded any chase that might have started and was doubtless hunting again. Possibly he had called the mansion on the Bayfront and reported to French Paul. Perhaps the Maroon Gang was getting the word even now--and starting from houses, Bight clubs, gambling places, bookie joints and other regions to hunt in the city for a man with light hair, crew-cut, and a dark complexion.

The professor walked up to the cab. "Want to go over to the Gables," he said. "In kind of a hurry."

He got out near the center of Coral Gables. They might expect him to head for Bedelia's. And he wanted to walk, wanted to be certain, before he approached the Macey house, "that no one was following.

He came up to it from the rear. Lights were burning. He entered the hedged garden and sat for minutes in the chair where Marigold had once, sat beside him. He breathed and listened. There had been no one--all the way. He knocked on the back door.

The kitchen light went on. Marigold was wearing her hair down. She had on a housecoat--white and gold. She peered through the glass and unlocked the door. "I've been practically out of my mind! Mr. Harmon called over an hour ago and I expected you right away!"

He came in. "Better pull the blinds."

She stared. "Good heavens! Look at you!"

"Where's your father?"

"Out. He and mother went to Fort Myers to visit friends this afternoon. And Steve's out, too--with his girl. That usually means four A.M. So I've got you in my clutches."

He said, "Thank the lord!"

She was shaking. "What happened? Bedelia has given us an idea of what you were working on. Come in the den and tell me. It's got Venetian blinds and draperies you can pull. Mr. Harmon told me to keep you out of sight--and above everything else, to keep you. What tore your coat?"

He followed her through a hallway and into the judge's den. She repeated her last question.

"Bullet," he said.

He was not prepared to have her throw her arms around him and kiss him. "Oh, Martin! You're--all right?"

It made, he thought, two girls and two major kisses for the evening. A double life-

-with two women in it. He gathered her long, curly hair in his right hand, pulled her head back so that her face was turned up, and kissed her again.

"I'm all right. The guy missed."

"Who was it?"

He sat down in the judge's leather easy chair. "Look, Marigold. For Heaven's sake, stop asking me things! I
think
I've done everything I could. I let Harmon know. I told Connie."

"Connie who? Martin--is that the blonde you were necking a few days ago at the Bombay Royale? Jim Ellis and Nancy Beatty saw you. It was all over the campus the next morning."

His eyes twinkled. "A small matter--in view of subsequent findings! I am a criminal, a gangster, a jewel smuggler--not to mention dead by my own hand!"

"I was jealous," she said simply. "Martin. Would you like coffee?"

He lighted one of the judge's cigars and watched blue smoke spiral toward the ceiling. Harmon would have gone to wherever he was going. The place, he silently hoped, where the plane would land. Sanders would have made whatever provision he felt necessary concerning The Tip. But it was not likely The Tip would return to the Club Egret. Not ever.

He was out of it. After tonight, his incognito would be worthless. He could emerge from it. Resign from the University, he thought somberly. Make a last call on MacFalkland. Find another position, if he could.

Marigold came with a tray. Light brown hair lying softly on her gold and white shoulders. She poured coffee. He watched her achingly. In a few days, he'd be on his way. Never see her again. Never see Connie again. There was a French folk song:

Oh, les fraise et les framboises,

Les vins que nous avons bu,

Et les belles villageoise,

Nous ne les verrons plus.

And the pretty village girls, we'll never see them again.
It was supposed to be a gay song.

She poured coffee and put the cup on a table beside him. "Can I sit in your lap?"

"No!"

"Why not, Martin? The other day--when you stepped on Dad's pineapples--I thought--"

"That, Marigold, was because you are beautiful and I used to be a professor in good standing--with a lot of admiration for you and a certain amount of curiosity."

"Was it the limit of your curiosity?"

He shook his head. "I'm somebody else, now, Marigold. I don't even know who."

"That--Connie!"

"Connie's a wonderful girl, too. But I'm--psychologically a little dated for you modern girls. I was brought up to be old-fashioned. "

"Don't you know that a great many modern girls act modern just to get a chance to become old-fashioned?"

"Do they?" He smoked and smiled and finally shook his head.

"You sit down over there, Marigold, and let me be. I want to think. Harmon--out in the Glades--down in the Keys. A plane flying--a grim business that's got to stop."

"Bedelia told me. It's--"

"Inhuman!" He flicked ashes into his saucer. "Such a profound amount of imagination and skill in the thing! Right now--out somewhere on the Gulf Stream--there's a boat called the
Mary Fifth--"
he broke off.

"Doing what?"

He did not hear her. His mind had gone back to the plane cabin--to the feel of sash weights wired on his handcuffs--to Chuck's voice: "On the nights we fly, maybe the
Mary
Fifth
--that's a Miami boat--goes out fishing."

He had told the F.B.I. that it
was
the
Mary Fifth
--that the
Mary Fifth
always went out, when they flew. Suppose Chuck had meant that maybe, at times, it was
some other
boat?

"Where's the phone?"

"Mr. Harmon said you were just to sit here!"

It was one thirty but he dialed the Fishing Pier. The phone rang, rang, rang on and on. Finally a disgruntled voice said, "Yeah?"

"Is the
Mary Fifth
there?"

"This is a hell of a time to call about a charter! I'm the mate on the
Binney
--and you woke me up--"

"Is she there?"

"Yeah--she's here and locked up tight and the crew gone home hours ago. Gimme your name--and I'll leave a note for them to call in the morning."

He dialed another number.

"Federal Bureau of Investigation."

"This is Mr. Skeat."

"Wilson speaking."

"Is it possible to reach Harmon?"

"No, Professor. What's up?"

"The
Mary Fifth
didn't go out tonight."

"We know that. They're probably operating without her." Wilson's voice was amiable. "Make it that much easier for Harmon and the rest."

"They might have used another boat."

"Yeah? Did you mention it?"

"I just thought of it."

Wilson swore. "Harmon overlooked it."

"He didn't overlook it, man! I told him there was just one boat. The rest of my information was right so we took that statement for granted, too."

"I don't know how we--at this point--"

"Can you find out from the Miami Marine Operator what boats, if any, are outside tonight? Getting calls?"

"Sure!"

"Ring me here. You know where I am?"

"Macey's house. Oke."

He waited tensely. The phone rang within three minutes.

"Wilson, here. Look. Marine calls have been pretty slow tonight. One to Cat Cay.

A houseboat named the
Spanish Galleon
is out with a party up around the Haulover some place. They had a long talk, half an hour ago. A lot of stuff about hanging a shark and fighting it and planning to beach it."

"Beach it?"

"That's what the operator said.
Good lord!"

"You'll need men all along there, then!" The professor spoke fast. "There's that empty stretch between the Haulover and Golden Beach."

"Professor--we haven't got one man left."

"Police."

"We've got fifteen names on the list. How long will it take one wrong guy to find out--if the cops start getting up a posse now?"

"Certainly you could pick your men. . . ."

"I can try. Harmon will probably shoot himself if the whole gang's working on a bum lead!"

The professor hung up. "You got a car, Marigold?"

Her eyes were vivid. "In two seconds, I'll change!"

"We haven't two seconds--and I'm going alone."

"Unless I can go with you, I won't be able to find the key."

He looked at her for a long, thoughtful moment.

"Get your clothes. Change in the car."

She ran upstairs and ran back in seconds. She led the way to the garage.

Coral Gables unwound behind them. They cut from the Tamiami Trail to Tweniy-seventh Avenue. It was wide, empty, and fast. He ran clear to Seventy-ninth--a causeway street--and within twenty minutes he was moving north in Miami Beach. At the bridge over the waters which make an island of Miami Beach, gasoline lights burned and a score of diligent net-casters stared concentratedly into the swift, slick tide below.